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"We have an evolutionary incentive to sacrifice for our offspring, our tribe, our friends. To keep them safe."
"Except for all the people who don't. Everything is conditional. You just can't always anticipate the conditions."
The short drive to the police station was like a condemned man's walk to the gallows. The memory of Wilson's baleful gaze from the bus station bench didn't help, hanging over him like a white thought balloon in a comic strip. He felt flattened and two-dimensional. His shoulder hurt. Even the rhythm and purr of the bike under him didn't help.
He parked illegally in front of the station, thought better of it, then parked the bike properly the second time. Tritter's office wasn't hard to find, and, true to House's cynical suspicions about the man's social life, the door was cracked and a dim lamp was still on. He dry-swallowed another pill in the hallway, partly because it had been a few hours and the pain was intensifying again, and partly just because he could. He didn't bother to knock. He wasn't up for the smart-assed comment that would inevitably follow.
"Back off of Wilson," he snapped at the man behind the desk, whose head was bowed over a pile of papers, probably with House's name all over them.
Tritter had his cell phone pressed to his ear, and he looked up leisurely, chewing on a toothpick. "Thank you for calling. I'll be in touch," he said to the person at the end of the phone line before hanging up. He didn't offer House a seat, and House didn't take one, feeling at some level that he might want to be in a position to make a hasty exit, if necessary.
"I don't think you're in a position to be making demands." Tritter spoke slowly, with the confidence of a man who knows he can make your life a living hell with the flick of a pen.
House gritted his teeth and breathed through his nose. His shoulder hurt like a bitch. "Wilson has patients to prescribe for. Cancer people -- dying people. Leaning on Wilson doesn't help you get to me. It just makes his cancer kids die a little faster."
Tritter was silent, patiently waiting for House to make a better case, watching him with curious, clinical detachment. He leaned back in his chair, and House shot mental daggers at it, unsuccessfully willing it to tip over.
"Wilson has nothing to do with this," House said, angry at himself for being unable to meet the cop's eyes and plead with him at the same time.
"Oh, I think he does," Tritter said smoothly. "I think he has quite a lot to do with ..." Tritter dropped his gaze to House's feet and back up again, looking him over the way someone might look at a dead rodent. "... you," he finished.
The yellow lamplight did little to soften Tritter's smug demeanor. House stared back at him, knowing his own expression was straddling the suffocating border between surprised and horrified.
"Found a few suits in the closet that obviously weren't yours," Tritter explained. "They'd actually been cleaned. And you don't exactly strike me as a man who keeps eggplant in his kitchen. Bailing you out, lying about the prescriptions -- he must be a hell of a ... friend." Tritter's smile was almost sweet, a parody of understanding and empathy. "And here you are, paying me a visit just to try and get me to let him off the hook."
House mentally ran through half a dozen retorts in a matter of seconds, rejecting "he's in the middle of a divorce," "it's not like that," and the worst -- "he leaves his food in my refrigerator because he eats there more often than anywhere else" -- in quick succession. If his face started to turn red, it was all over. He finally settled on the weak but passable: "Wilson lives in a hotel. We're not together."
Tritter almost seemed to take pity on him, although it was clear he didn't believe House's denial. "Lovers' spat?" he asked, one last jab, and then waved his hand dismissively. "Doesn't matter." He reclined even further back in the chair and cocked his head. "So," he said. "What are you offering?"
House was sure -- at least he thought he was sure -- that he was imagining Tritter's suggestive tone. The insinuations about his relationship with Wilson were putting him in an unsteady state of mind. He rolled his eyes, trying not to make his discomfort too obvious. His mind went back to Wilson, as it often did, but this time it was Wilson shouting at him, Wilson's face strained in anger, Wilson's tight lips telling him: do something. Go in, show some remorse, tell Tritter you'll get some help --
And since he wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for Wilson, if it wasn't for his stupid desperate need to keep Wilson, House bit the inside of his cheek and said, "An apology."
Tritter was silent, and then he began to smile, a gesture that immediately turned sour and patronizing. When Tritter chuckled, the smug sound of it made House's fingers curl involuntarily inward.
"An apology," Tritter said, seeming to take it into consideration. He tapped a pen against his desk and furrowed his brow. Finally, he planted his hands on the desk and stood up like he had all the time in the world to get to his feet. "You've been charged with some very serious crimes, Dr. House. I'm not sure that an apology would suffice."
House closed his eyes briefly, biting back the anger. Wilson's face, Wilson's tense mouth and wounded eyes ... "I could look into other options for managing the pain," he half lied.
Tritter watched him impassively as he slowly walked around the desk. "Get help, you mean."
"Sure, why not," House muttered.
"Like ... rehab?" Tritter was still chewing idly on the toothpick.
House had to grind his teeth to stifle the instinctive denials: I don't have a problem. I don't need help. "Yeah," he managed to say in a tone that sounded almost conciliatory.
Tritter shifted his jaw and turned pensive once again, appearing to weigh this second offer. "As concerned as I am about the impact of your addiction on your ability to do your job," he said, "I'm just not certain that that's enough."
All right, Wilson, House thought, I tried it your way. "What, then?" he asked, unable to control the latent rage in his voice. "You want to send me to jail? You really think that's going to work? Try me," he nearly spat. "You have no case. You make life difficult for a few weeks and then it's over. I'm out a few grand in lawyer's fees and you lose. Wilson's not going to cave."
Tritter's grin was more unnerving than it had been earlier, or maybe House was just easier to unnerve. "If you really believed that," Tritter said, "you wouldn't be here, would you?"
House held onto his anger a second longer and then deflated. "Do you want money?" he tried. "Because if you were looking for a rich doctor to lean on for cash, you picked the wrong guy. Me, I mean. You won't be able to squeeze any money out of Wilson. Even I can't get anything out of him most days."
"I don't want your money, House." Tritter had started to circle the small office, moving at an easy pace and putting House on guard. Tritter's pacing was quickly putting him between House and the door, and although he harbored no delusions about his ability to outpace the cop, House still wanted a head start, if that was what it came to. He shifted uneasily, nausea curling in the pit of his stomach.
"You don't want my apology, you don't want me in rehab, and you don't want a bribe. So what will it take? You want to stick a rectal thermometer in me?" Even the realization that Tritter could probably beat the shit out of him right then if he wanted to couldn't stop House from being House. "That one a little too personal for you? Hit too close to home? Did --"
He should have expected it, but the Vicodin and the residual exhaustion from fighting with Wilson made his reflexes slow. Tritter grabbed him forcibly by the shoulders and spun him around, exactly as he had on the night of the arrest. Some part of House's brain prepared a jab about Tritter only knowing one dance move, while his leg seared with agony. But unlike the arrest, they were in close quarters now, which made it easy for Tritter to shove him forward, pressing him face first into the wall. The paint was chalky and cool against his cheek. He winced, and for the first time since he couldn't even remember when, he felt a bolt of what he recognized as fear.
A hand in the middle of his back held him in place, and then Tritter's entire body was pressed close behind him, chest to back, groin to ass, legs on either side of his own. He suppressed a shudder, or possibly a shiver, at the feel of Tritter's breath ghosting over his ear and neck. So it was going to be this, then. House closed his eyes and automatically pictured Wilson, his eyes hard and hurting. Betrayed. House had betrayed him before, maybe, but he knew now that he wasn't going to do it again. Even if this was what it took. If this was the sacrifice ... well, everything was conditional. And nobody could have anticipated these conditions.
Tritter's breathing was heavy, like knocking House around had taken it out of him. House wasn't entirely ready yet to contemplate the other possible reasons for heavy breathing.
Tritter spoke slowly, like he had to drag the words out of himself. "First I wanted to humiliate you," he said. "But then I got to know you a little better, and your Dr. Wilson came along, and I realized that humiliation wasn't the way to go. In fact, I realized that humiliation is sort of a way of life for you. And I realized that you had bigger weaknesses. One big weakness in particular."
House's leg gave a half-spasm and he groaned a little, quietly. His weakness echoed in his ear: you were either going to help me through this or you weren't. I got my answer.
Abruptly, Tritter disappeared from his back, leaving a rush of cool air to take his place. House slumped, bracing one hand on the wall to hold himself upright. He waited with enforced calm for Tritter to take the next step, fighting the instinct to fight. But when nothing happened, he cautiously turned around to find Tritter standing a safe distance away, appraising him with an unreadable expression.
"You can go now," Tritter finally said, turning and walking back around the desk.
House raised his eyebrows. "You'll leave Wilson out of this," he said, making it a statement, but an uncertain one.
"Oh, sure," Tritter said, waving him away. "No problem."
House tugged at his motorcycle jacket, but he wasn't dumb enough to actually ask.
Tritter, it seemed, could read his mind. "Maybe if you'd dropped in earlier," he said, his gaze utterly predatory. "But now ..." He shrugged and took his seat again with exaggerated triumph. "I've got what I want."
Curious -- nosy -- and still not believing that Tritter was just going to drop the Wilson issue, he asked, "And what's that?"
Tritter gave another smoothly confident smile and idly tapped the phone on his desk. "Ask Dr. Wilson."
Unbidden, an image came into his mind: Wilson, in the frigid hotel room he was temporarily calling home, on his knees in front of a smug, gloating Tritter. House's vision went blindingly white. But Tritter couldn't have meant that, because House would have known, he would have seen it in Wilson's eyes, and heard it in Wilson's voice.
But if not that -- then what?
He opened his mouth to take a chance on asking Tritter, but the detective had clearly already dismissed him and was engrossed in paperwork, paying House not the slightest bit of attention. Only as House passed through the doorway and into the hall did he hear Tritter's voice call idly after him: "I'll be seeing you, doctor."